The Stern Opportunity

Issue date: 4/11/06 Section: Voices

For 10 days over spring break, 37 AHBBS trekkers were challenged to travel all across the nation of South Africa and take on an incredible variety of physical, mental and cultural obstacles. The group was composed of a vast mix of full-time and part-time students, alumni, friends and spouses that came prepared and excited to explore the truly unique and diverse "land of contrasts" that lay before them as they took on….

THE-AMAZING-SOUTH-AFRICAN-AHBBS-TREK-RACE-ADVENTURE-THING!!

Day 1 - Johannesburg
A 17-hour plane ride has the potential to turn the toughest men and women into a lump of economy-class Jell-o, but 8 movies on-demand and countless inter-seat phone calls later our trekkers were fit as ever and ready to eat! An evening trip to Nelson Mandela Square introduced many members of the group to their first taste of game such as ostrich and kudu and to their first of many glasses of South African wine.

Day 2 - Johannesburg
The team's first full day in South Africa began with a trip to the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC). There the group learned about how SABC's four television stations and 11 radio stations deal with the difficulty of broadcasting news and programming to a country that currently recognizes 11 national languages. Before the team's tour of the complex was done, however, Stern's own Wells Chen was delivering the latest sports news via teleprompter while trek leader Natasha Belgrave led a portion of the group in giving a shout out to NYU on live national radio.
Having left their mark at SABC, the trekkers moved on to the township of Soweto. This predominantly black township played a major role in the country's resistance to its former apartheid regime. There the group visited the Soweto Mountain of Hope, the centerpiece of a massive educational and cultural project to strengthen the community, but not before taking a sobering walk through one of the region's biggest "squatter villages." The setting for the movie "Tsosti," this village's seemingly endless maze of makeshift homes introduced the team to a level of poverty that is simply not known in the US and truly hammered home the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty that exists in many of South Africa's urban centers.
A far more uplifting evening brought together the entire group at the dance club, Moloko, in central Jo'Burg. It also answered the age-old question of "how do you get 14 people into a packed popular night club without paying a cover?" The answer: "Have Olivia Leon flash her business card from her old job at Oxygen Media and convince the club owner that she produces a travel show about trendy international night spots." And winning the award for what is likely the best pickup line in the southern hemisphere is a young South African woman who, upon learning that one of our trekkers was studying business at NYU asked him in broken English, "Do you know AS-WARTH DA-MOD-DAR-AN?" - needless to say, a totally different take on Mergers & Acquisitions…

Continued...

Page 1 of 4 next >

Article Tools